Friday, March 29, 2013

Project Life, Edition 2, Begins

Quite hard to contain my excitement. Of course, I broke in the Cameo. What a beautiful machine. Truly. I only experimented, nothing major. But I tell ya. Instant love.

I spent most of my evening working on my cover page for Project Life. You may recall that a few years back, I participated in the original launch of PL. If you thought I was excited then, you have NO idea how excited I am now. Back in 2010, Becky Higgins started with one album kit (now called the Cherry Edition) and an idea: make archiving life easier and more accessible to everyone, especially working moms. The kit came with page protectors, journaling cards, title cards, a date stamp, and an album. The cards were printed on one side, unless they were the folded journaling cards. I loved the album, and I cranked out a ton of pages.

Now, Becky's idea has, well, exploded like Mt. St. Helens. She has many, many styles to chose from, the introduction of mini albums, page protectors for vertical AND horizontal orientation, and everything is pieced out. She has partnered with American Crafts, and not has a line of pens (which I purchased and have already fallen in love with) as well as the partnership with AC Digitals, which carries her many designs for PL in digital format. The album set I purchased is called the Blush set. I also purchased the AC Digitals Midnight album graphics. I love the chevron nature of the Blush album, and most of the colors and graphics are up this girl's alley. However, some of the cards just are not. So what follows is a hybrid version of PL, and I am super excited to share.

Part of this layout's concept was borrowed from this wonderful cover page I pinned on Pinterest. I loved how she used individual pics of her family members in the 3 x 4 spaces (which, if you are doing this, size your cards to 2.9 x 4...that's what actually fits in the sleeves). I found a file with a rounded .png frame and recolored it to white (I will figure out how to create these on my own, but for now, HELLO Internet!). I used Petunia Bounce font to write the names on each pic. This will probably be the font I use throughout, as I love it so. I treated the photos using Rad Lab. I pledge my Photoshop neophyte love to this filter arrangement. Do check it out if you are not so sure how to treat your photos to make them print beautifully. And yes, there's an app: Pic.Tap.Go. I used the full fledged Rad Lab as I took my pics with what I lovingly call "Bertha," my Nikon D60. My pic was snapped by my 16 year old! Yeah, Ig!

The "bits & pieces*" card came with the Blush cards and is recommended for the first page (it's printed on the back of the card). I hemmed and hawed about this one, but I really like it as part of the finished page. The card beside it is from the Midnight Edition. I typed in "Three Hundred Sixty-Five, Two Thousand Thirteen, Two Thousand Fourteen." Yup, I am going to try to do a photo a day. We shall see how ambitious that might be.

On the bottom of the page, I used some cardstock from the Midnight Edition. I cropped it to 4 x 6 in 300 dpi and found the parts with sayings that really fit best. Then I printed on white cardstock. The last card was part of the Blush Edition and is recommended for the first page. I added some Amy Tangerine Thickers (recent purchase!) with our family name. At first, I left it blank, but I felt the name was important.

Whew. Can you say "overthought?" From this point on, I am hoping it's not going to take me this long. The title page is always my tough area. I tried to get some yellow in, but it just did not blend. Love the gray and blue. It works well for me. :)

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JoLynn

Courtesy

I would be arrogant to say that my creations are completely my ideas. So many different works inspire me. If you are inspired by my work and would like to copy it, please be ethical and credit the post of inspiration. Permission is not granted to use any description or photos of cards or projects for any publication submissions.